Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.

Summary: Oneshot, Movieverse AU, vampire story. It started out as biological warfare, a virus engineered to wipe out the human race. And then it all went horribly wrong...

Rating: T

Author note: Aaannnd it's a vampire story! DX Knew I'd have to finish writing one sooner or later, those little buggers are as ubiquitous as the high school AU fics (and no! I am not writing you, high school AU fic!) I apologize for the insult to biology in this fic. The science student deep inside of me hates me right now. But at least the fan-thing part of me is happy. Thanks for reading!

Also: The 'vampires' of this fic take on many aspects of Terry Pratchett's "dromes." :) And Ratchet's line of advice here is actually a bunny from Silvane. Thanks, Silvane!

Hunger and Thirst

Bumblebee remembered one of the last good days, before the virus was released. Mikaela's cyber-hound and Sam's turbo-fox kept watch, as they were programmed to do, as Mikaela and Sam slumbered in Bumblebee's arms, all three of them dreaming sweet dreams.

Bumblebee stood at the outskirts of a forgotten, crumbling city whose name he could no longer remember. The stars were in hiding, and the moon, when it was shown in the breaks in the clouds, was just a tiny sliver of white. The lights from the buildings had long since gone out, so everything looked like shadows within shadows within shadows.

He hoped that Sam and Mikaela weren't scared this night. Sam had always slept with a night-light, and even Mikaela had been edgy when the sun went down and there was no moon or stars or city lights to make up for its absence.

"This must be it," Bumblebee muttered. Mechanoreception, photoreception, chemoreception...those three senses told him that it was alright to enter the city, that there wasn't anything there, but his fourth sense hadn't had its say yet. He cast out his scans, searching for Sam or Mikaela's frequencies...but in doing so, made his own vulnerable.

Instead of an answering call, his mind brushed against a string of signals, a tendril of spider web. He withdrew immediately, raising up the walls that guarded his processor before his mind became tangled in the woven dreams.

Never reach into the dark, Ratchet had told him once. It just makes it easier for things to reach out and grab you.

"Should have remembered that," he said aloud. He looked up to the sky, trying to catch a glimpse of the ever-elusive moon. "A web to catch an itty-bitty Bumblebee. You guys would have laughed, huh?"

The shadows, of course, did not answer.

"I have to stop talking to myself," he said, shaking his head ruefully. He stood there, in the silence, trying to figure out what he should do next, when there was movement right at the edge of his viewing screens.

"Sam?" he asked. "Mikaela?"

There it was again; a shadow of movement, in the other direction. He whirled around, barely in time to see a dark shape headed deep into the city.

It was too small and moved too quickly to be human...but perhaps it was one of the drones?

Remaining wary of the traps that lay ahead, he followed it.

It led him deeper, past the crumbling buildings and abandoned cars. It seemed to know that it was being followed , because it increased its pace, but Bumblebee kept up easily.

He managed to corner it at the back of an old alleyway, and it turned around, and transformed.

Bumblebee's optics shuttered in surprise.

"Wheelie?"

"Boss?"

The Autobot and the former Decepticon looked at each other in surprise. "Are you real?" Wheelie demanded suddenly.

"Are you?" Bumblebee asked.

Wheelie quickly went up to Bumblebee, and smacked his leg with a small fist. The clang of metal and metal sounded loudly in the darkness.

Wheelie hissed, withdrawing his hand and shaking it a bit, as though punching Bumblebee had hurt. A lot. "Yep. You're real, alright. Even Warrior Goddess couldn't pull off that trick." He looked at him. "How'd you find this place, Boss?"

"Luck. I saw some other traps on the way, but none of them fit Sam or Mikaela's patterns. I knew they wouldn't go far, though. I just followed the signals and hoped."

Wheelie abruptly stepped upon Bumblebee's foot, and then wrapped his arms around Bumblebee's leg. Bumblebee looked on, baffled.

Wheelie finally detached himself, and then glared at him. "That never happened!"

"It's...good to see you, Wheelie."

"You too, Boss," came the grudging response. "You're a sight for sore optics. Make no mistake, I still hate you to your very wiring, but Mutt and Warrior Goddess haven't been very good company lately, if you know what I mean-"

"Sam and Mikaela? They haven't gone yet?"

"Sort of, I guess," Wheelie muttered, his gaze to the ground. "Depends what you mean. In body, they're still around, but their heads are somewhere in la-la ville." Then his shoulders slumped. He looked back at Bumblebee, and said. "Boss, I said it before and I'll say it again. Giving them those implants and makin' them attached to drones was a bad idea, 'cuz who knew where it could lead to. And now look. Now they can control things. It's gone beyond what it was meant for, Boss. It's gone and made them fragging psychic."

"It let them live," Bumblebee said. "We couldn't be around to protect them all the time. Being attached to a drone gave them a chance to defend themselves, or to escape. A...guard dog, in a way. And then...it let them survive the virus."

"You think so?" Wheelie spat. "A nice idea for soft 'Bots that want to be able to recharge sometimes, 'cuz you know what I see? I see that the virus made 'em very, very hungry, and those implants gave 'em the power to feed themselves."

"At least they're alive."

"If you call this living."

There was another uncomfortable pause, and then Bumblebee asked, "Have Cybertronians ever wandered in here?"

"Mostly just cyber-hounds, turbo-foxes, that sort of thing," Wheelie said, shrugging. "Little glitches that followed us all the way from Cybertron. Those things are easy to fool, but the energon in them isn't enough. But sometimes Mutt and Warrior Goddess catch a break and some 'Cons throw in a cassette or mini or something, some unlucky glitch that got branded as traitor or coward or just upset the wrong person at the wrong time."

"Have they ever let any live?"

Wheelie looked up at him incredulously. Bumblebee's shoulders slumped. "I didn't think so," he said.

"Trust me, Boss, it takes all of their focus to keep their hunger from targeting you guys."

"Then..." Bumblebee said, his attention diverting for a moment to the darkness that surrounded them. He wondered, briefly, if Sam and Mikaela were watching them. "They must be really by now," he finished softly. "They're losing control."

Wheelie's optics shuttered. "You mean you can hear them?"

Bumblebee looked back at him. "You mean you can't?"

"I'm too small a target," Wheelie said. "I ain't even a morsel for them. I can slip through the holes in the web, so to speak. I mean, I know it's there, but it doesn't bug me and I ain't stupid enough to bug it, you know?" There was a pause, and then Wheelie asked, "So what does it feel like?"

"It feels...strange."

"I'm gonna need a little more than that, Boss."

"There was one night," Bumblebee said slowly. "When Bluestreak swore that he heard Prowl calling to him, but Prowl was in a meeting with Jazz and Optimus at the time. And then there was another night, towards the end of a rescue, when one of Arcee's parts thought she heard a human child calling for help, but her other two parts didn't."

"Have you ever heard anything?"

Bumblebee looked away, and said, "Just voices, telling me to come outside."

"It can't be Mutt and Warrior Goddess," Wheelie said, his tone daring Bumblebee to say otherwise. His voice reverberated around the empty buildings. "It must have been someone else. I mean, there were others that survived the virus. Others who figured out how to control drones without you tellin' 'em how. Mutt and Goddess don't slip their control so easy."

"I know it isn't," Bumblebee said. "I know their frequencies anywhere."

Wheelie calmed down a bit at that. "Good to know that you know, Boss," he said. "Besides, Mutt and Warrior Goddess are good, but they ain't too bright, sometimes. Mutt sure ain't. When they're in control, they don't go for easy prey like the Autobots."

"We're easy prey?" Bumblebee said, shuttering his optics.

"Yeah," Wheelie said. He looked a bit to the left, then, and then a bit to the right, as if he feared being overheard. "I heard 'em talking one day," he said quietly. "Mutt was saying that he'd been dreaming Bluestreak's dreams, and that he'd know exactly which tune to play to get him to come outside. And Warrior Goddess was saying how Arcee's dreams were just as simple. They weren't too pleased about it."

"I'm not afraid of them," Bumblebee said. "I know they'd never do it."

"They won't," Wheelie said. "But their hunger might."

"How long as it been since they've last eaten?"

"About three orns," Wheelie said. "I mean, it hasn't been easy, lately. The 'Cons are learning to stay away from the webs, and things just haven't been wandering in by themselves. I can't help 'em, Boss," Wheelie said frustratedly. "They won't even let me contact you guys. They think they're keeping you safe, or something. Sometimes I go out and try to attract something, make it go deeper into the dream that they've set up, but the only things around lately have been cyber-hounds and turbo-foxes. And since they don't have the same kind of energon as the kind that comes enriched from a spark, I can't count that as 'eating...'"

He trailed off as Bumblebee stared at him. "You...bring things for them to eat?"

Wheelie glared at him once again. "Hey!" he snapped. "I ain't bait for nobody!"

"I never said you were."

There was yet another stretch of silence, and then Wheelie muttered, "So yeah. They've been getting desperate. They chased me off an orn ago, and I know they haven't taken in energon in at least three. If I haven't been seeing their puppets wandering around, I'd figured that they'd have terminated, or something."

"Three orns," Bumblebee repeated softly.

"Boss," Wheelie said. "I hope you're not thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing." But Bumblebee had already turned his back to him, and focused his attention to the strings of sounds. His guards were still up, of course, but he was going to walk on the strands rather than be caught in the trap.

"Boss," Wheelie said as Bumblebee started towards the deepest part of the city. "If you let your guard down, they'll make you sense things that aren't there. Once you walk into one of their dreams there ain't telling whether or not you'll ever wake up."

"I understand."

Wheelie stepped forward, as if to stop him, somehow, but then he stepped back again and then shrugged. "Your funeral."

And then Bumblebee walked into the dream, letting his fourth sense guide him to the weavers of this web.

X x x

Prowl was to his right, beckoning to him. "Bumblebee," he said. "I need your assistance."

Then Ratchet was suddenly to his left, glaring at him with his arms crossed. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he roared.

He heard the call of his radio, and then Optimus Prime's deep voice said: "Bumblebee, return to base."

But things were wrong. Neither Prowl nor Ratchet looked quite right. Something was...off. They looked as if someone had conjured up their images from a foggy memory. Optimus' voice had a cackle of static to it, something that never happened.

He was getting closer. He must have been, for Sam and Mikaela to start distorting his perception this way. He ignored his audios, ignored the illusions at the edges of his viewing screens, and reinforced the guards in his mind.

He was deep inside now, relying mainly on his fourth sense to tell the difference between dream and reality.

If only Blaster were here, he thought ruefully. But Blaster and other strong technopaths already had their hands full trying to protect the rest of the Autobots from other hungry, thirsty, desperate humans.

And still spiders slipped through the cracks.

He forced himself to calm down, and closed his optics, focusing to make himself see things as they were, not as how Sam and Mikaela were making them out to be.

When he opened his optics again, he found that he was surrounded by corpses, by dead and dying drones.

His optics widened in surprise, and he took a step backward, only for his back to be met with the corpse of yet another drone. They were suspended by wires, draped almost lazily across the wreckage. The dead ones were already having their parts scavenged by retro-rats and other small creatures, and the ones who were barely alive had flickering optics, their processors living in the dream woven for them.

Hearing things that weren't there.

Seeing things that weren't there.

Bumblebee had asked an unfortunate Cliffjumper what the dream was like, and Cliffjumper said that the trap he'd wandered into made him dream about Cybertron, how that planet of molten energon and obsidian spires looked like before the war.

Each drone had their energy chambers ripped open. Specialized panels at the heads of the drones gathered light and heat energy, changing the form of the energy and centring it on this chamber. There was where energon should have pooled to be energized again before being sent out to the body and processor. But the chambers of the dead were empty, and the chambers of the dying didn't have enough energon left.

But that was the real evil of it, wasn't it? Not only did they hunger for energon, but they needed powered energon; they needed to eat their prey alive. And, to make matters worse, not even the energon of drones could satisfy them; they needed energon charged with power of a spark.

"Monsters," Sunstreaker had called them.

Bumblebee had pounded his pretty faceplate into the dirt that day.

Even as Bumblebee watched, the optics of the last two drones went out.

He turned away from this grave...then he heard something move behind him.

A tremor went up his armour, and he forced himself to turn back around.

Scavenging retro-rats jumped away from the reanimated cyber-hound as it ripped itself away from the wires that suspended it. It landed heavily on all fours, losing more wiring and metal as it did so.

Bumblebee peered into the drone's shattered optics. The corpse of the unfortunate cyber-hound peered back. "Sam?" he asked. "Mikaela? Are you there?"

It bounded away from him, and Bumblebee followed, ignoring the whispers in his mind.

Turn back.

You can't be here.

What are you doing?

Go away.

X x x

The puppet that had once been a drone lead him farther into the city, and then entered an old scrapyard. It looked almost like a maze whose walls consisted of mountains of ruined cars. The pathways were wide enough to accommodate even Optimus. Broken glass and broken parts littered the ground. Bumblebee paused at the entrance, wondering if this, too, was a dream, before pressing on.

The puppet made several erratic turns, and Bumblebee almost lost it several times...but he made it to a clearing before the puppet was nowhere in sight.

He almost considered this as a dead end, and was about to exit, when something caught his attention.

Two drones, curled up with one another, amidst the wreckage.

Bumblebee felt his spark give a strange pulse at the sight. Even when they were desperate, they still hadn't touched the drones that had imprinted on them...perhaps their last tie to the world of before.

It was a comforting thought.

Sort of.

"Came to see us, 'Bee?" a voice asked. From the edge of his viewing screens, Bumblebee saw them. First Sam, and then Mikaela, seeming to rise from the shadows. They leaned against the side of a ruined car—which, Bumblebee realized, in the real world, could have been the corpse of an unfortunate 'Con. They were smiling tiredly, looking at him with their beautiful human eyes.

"That isn't you," Bumblebee said immediately. "That's just a dream of you."

Not-Sam's smile faltered for a moment, before he resumed his strange cheerfulness. He walked a little, his back never quite facing Bumblebee. "Do you know how easy it is to make a dream?" not-Sam continued, his tone bright and careless. He bent to pick up a discarded piece of jagged metal, ran the edge against his thumb, shrugged and then discarded it. Bumblebee could hear the clang from where it fell, but when his optics shuttered and he looked again, the piece was exactly where it was before—it hadn't been touched. "Everything is so neat," Sam continued. "So orderly. All the visual files over in that one folder, all the audio files in that other folder...I mean, organic brains are so messy, so many connections and branches, you can barely tell what you ought to touch, but you guys make it just so easy."

"Easy?"

"We're here, aren't we, 'Bee? Making you dream." Mikaela asked. "And others who don't even know you guys can make you dream." She wandered over to her cyber-hound, and seemed to stroke it. The cyber-hound looked up, and seemed perplexed for a moment before trying to lean its head against Mikaela's palm. Even though Bumblebee knew that the cyber-hound passed right through the illusion, he didn't see such a break in the dream. "The me you see, and the Sam you see...we're just your dream of us. We could be miles away from anywhere, for all you know."

"You're here," Bumblebee said, his voice cold. "I know you're here. Stop this. Come back with me."

"And what?" not-Mikaela said, giving a bitter laugh. Not-Sam gave a mirthless grin, and shook his head. "Make a nice feast out of the entire Autobot army?"

"We can find a cure-"

"For what?" Mikaela spat. "You heard Ratchet. This thing's mutating too fast—one strain's just replacing the next. Or, maybe," she said, laughing. "Maybe this isn't even the virus anymore. Maybe we are sick, but the energon—the energon took it to a whole new level. Finding a cure won't fix anything that the energon did to us."

"You won't know. You'd never know," Bumblebee insisted. "Think about what you're saying, Mikaela. You know that it isn't as hopeless as that. Come back. We can do something about it. We can fight this."

Not-Sam and not-Mikaela shook their heads. "We tried it before, didn't we?" not-Sam said. "Red won't ever forgive us, and I can't blame him. Dreaming is too easy; waking up is the problem."

"Guys, just-"

Sit down.

Bumblebee was half-crouched before he realized what he was doing.

He heard Sam and Mikaela's laugh, coming somewhere from the shadows. The illusions just kept mirthlessly smiling.

"Don't you see?" not-Sam asked. "We can control you; and the hunger controls us. Do you see where this'll go? If you come up with a cure—any cure, no matter the side effects, we'll gladly take it. we'll gladly be your lab rats. But we can't come with you."

"Please understand, 'Bee," not-Mikaela said, giving him a strained smile. "It's safer this way."

The silence stretched, and Bumblebee still couldn't detect Sam and Mikaela, still couldn't make their illusions vanish.

"Okay," Bumblebee said finally. "I'll leave. But first...let me see you."

Not-Sam and not-Mikaela looked at one another.

"Please?"

"Okay," not-Mikaela said. "But first, you have to turn around."

"Why?" Bumblebee asked suspiciously, even though it was rather illogical to be concerned if these two illusions bolted—that didn't mean their weavers left with them.

"Well, Bumblebee," not-Sam said, smiling ruefully. "That's because we're-"

"-Right behind you."

Bumblebee whirled around. He wondered, briefly, why his scanners didn't pick up anything, but then his confusion was overwhelmed by his surprise, and something close to joy. He was happy, and yet... "Guys," he said. "What have you done to yourselves?"

They had moved beyond the small devices that let their drones know their location and their emotional status so that they could summon them in a moment of distress—such as during a Decepticon attack. Now, strand upon strand of implants lined their bodies, information coming in and being sent out, the fine silver lines at the tips of their fingers going up their arms, joining with other implant-lines from elsewhere on their bodies, converging into streams and then, finally, to two lines tracing the jaw, curving against the ear and coming out of each eye socket where the cybernetic implants had replaced their eyes. Silver and gold glinted slightly in the scant moonlight as the clouds parted, at least for a while.

There was a once time when he could tell where machine ended and where human began; when the difference between metal and flesh was as plain as night and day. Maybe it was the virus, or maybe it was the energon, but somewhere along the way, they had become wrong. They were wrong, they were freakish, they were a Frankenstein mismatch of flesh and metal scraps, they were a mockery of humans and of Cybertronians; and they were the most beautiful things that Bumblebee had ever seen.

"Yeah, you see, we're not exactly a sight to wake up to," Sam said wryly, his head tilted slightly to one side. "It's good to see you, 'Bee. Even if it's just for a while."

Mikaela was scowling, her golden eyes narrowed. "You're an idiot. But there. You've seen us. Now get out."

Bumblebee nodded, and then lunged for them, and his fingers curled around their bodies.

Behind them, the two remaining drones looked on curiously. The puppets slumped, their strings suddenly cut as Sam and Mikaela lost their focus.

Sam gave a shaky laugh. "Dirty trick," he spat.

"Damn you, Bumblebee," Mikaela said. She sighed. "So now what?"

"I can't take you back with me, huh?" Bumblebee asked, his voice small.

"It's not that we don't want you to," Sam said. "It's that...like this..."

Let go.

At any other time, Bumblebee would have been forced to obey. But both of them were still in shock, were in his grasp, were too weak, too hungry...

Bumblebee laughed. "Now who's playing dirty?"

Sam shrugged. "Can't blame me for trying."

There was a pause, broken when Bumblebee said, "You guys won't last long, will you?"

"Bumblebee," Sam said, his smile disappearing.

"Bumblebee," Mikaela said, the bite back in her voice. "Don't you dare."

But Bumblebee was already transferring Sam over to his other hand, and held both of them down firmly. Ignoring their protests, he forced open his spark chamber, and made a nick in the main wire that lead away from the chamber - the most enriched energon he had to offer.

Pure, bright energon spilled.

And then Sam and Mikaela lost the last tendrils of control that they had.

He'd collapsed the moment he started bleeding, and then Sam and Mikaela, breaking free from his grasp, began drinking. He could see it burning their lips, burning its way down their throats, exposing the bone underneath, but the tissue and flesh had already healed in just a shutter of an optic.

They didn't bother with trapping him in a dream. They were too hungry, too desperate. They just drank.

The two drones behind them just kept watching.

Too much, he thought vaguely. It wasn't the volume that they took; a mech his size should have been able to bleed out a hundred times the volume that two humans could possibly ingest. It was that they took energy: the energy from his spark that was meant for the his processor, his body, was being stolen, and the spark wasn't being given enough time to recharge and recover.

For a moment there, he thought that they wouldn't stop. But then they blinked, as though waking up. Mikaela sealed the energon leak, and Sam helped her close Bumblebee's spark chamber.

Then they climbed into Bumblebee's awaiting arms.

And then, for the first time in a long time, with Mikaela's cyber-hound and Sam's turbo-fox keeping watch, the two were asleep in an instant, slumbering peacefully in Bumblebee's arms.

In all probability, Sam and Mikaela would wake up before he did. They'd look at themselves, and be horrified at what they had done, in what they had become.

And they'd run away again.

Bumblebee was strangely okay with that. Because he knew that he would find them, and that he'd keep them alive. Whether or not a cure was found, whether or not they were consumed by their own hunger, Bumblebee would keep them alive by any means necessary.

Even if they hated him for it.

Bumblebee's sleep was, for the first time in a long time, blessedly dreamless.